it never changes to stop
by suncityblues
Summary: He sees designs like crop circles form in the spilled coffee. Thinks it might finally be time to go to sleep. Conrad/Worth


_**it never changes**_

**Author**:**merrycheri**

**Pairing**: Doc Worth/Conrad

He sees designs like crop circles form in the spilled coffee. Thinks it might finally be time to go to sleep.

There is a small room in the back, back, back section of his little alleyway office. It houses a stained and unmade bed and a sparsely populated bookshelf. There is an assortment of little meaningless things, like the sake cups with the little dancing flowers on them or the ornate victorian mirror fill the spaces in piles or stacked against walls. They are things Worth never really wanted, could never think of uses for, except maybe as ashtrays, but accepted in lieu of real pay for some reason or another.

Maybe if he lays down on the bed sleep will come quickly like it used to a long long time ago when he was still very small. Sleep hadn't come easily since puberty but it was easier now than it used to be. Maybe because he didn't try so hard anymore.

There was no use for someone like him to feign normalcy.

There was no use for anyone to feign normalcy.

In the room in the back back back of Worth's office, his room, he lays awake, exhausted. Watching a bug, a cockroach, but the smaller kind, not the big type that hissed, scurry across his ceiling illuminated by the distant yellow-orange light from the whore house across the way. That gaudy shit hole, responsible for a good chunk of his income.

Idly he pulls a thin knife from somewhere in-between his mattress and the floor, and applies enough pressure to the area above his elbow to draw blood but not need to get anything to stop it. Just enough for a little trickle to follow the path of gravity and join the other stains on the mattress.

Worth smiles like a Cheshire Cat.

And just as he shuts his eyes to begin Attempt at Sleep Number Two, he hears the sound of the front door banging shut and someone shouting his name.

The voice was familiar and immediately annoying.   But dutifully Worth opens his eyes. He's almost happy for the distraction. Maybe he will finish off the bottle of cheap Australian wine he left in the operating room after this is all over but for now the voice just becomes more persistent, "Worth! WORTH! Are you even here? Hanna said you're always here. WHERE THE HELL ARE YOU?"

Worth swaggers out into one of the frontmost rooms. Conrad hadn't even managed to get very far.

"Yed better be bleedin' Batty" Worth said in a mocking sing-song voice.

Conrad ignores the remark and proceeds to let loose a string of gibberish, about how he came looking to bite someone but couldn't because it was dirty and what if he caught some weird disease? and how he was so hungry and "where where you?" "how many rooms do you fucking have any way?" "why are you bleeding?" "Where is your coat?" "What's with the scars?" "Why is there coffee all over the floor?" "You should really get a fucking maid or something, you know, how are people supposed to trust a doctor if they think they're going to get gangrene from just walking in here?"

Worth hadn't heard a word of it, he was already digging around the cooler for the oldest, most common blood bag he had. No use wasting something like that on someone who didn't really need it.   Conrad gives the doctor a dark look when Worth hits him in the face with the blood bag, but at least it doesn't pop.

There is always that.

Conrad tucks it in his pocket (like hell he'd sit around here any longer than he had to) and turns to leave.  Worth shuts the cooler door and croons, "Christ, you are an annoyin' little fucker" over his shoulder, both insulting and dismissing Conrad at the same time.

Then the bitching begins, just like it always does.   But this time, somewhere around when Worth calls Conrad "a prissy little twat" and Conrad calls Worth "a fucking junkie asshole" their foreheads touch, accidentally.   Conrad blushes.

Worth grins.

And then they are kissing. It is an almost seamless transition from a yelling match to something more organic. Worth has Conrad pushed up against a wall and both of their mouths are bleeding courtesy of the one-toothed vampire. Conrad mumbles an apology but Worth just laughs and jams his tongue in the other's mouth, making sure to graze it against the tooth and mingle the spit with the blood.

There's something about the way Conrad kisses that Worth likes, or could really grow to like, maybe. The way it's awkward and inexperienced no matter how much experience he guy actually has; filled with a strange kind of energy, not unlike the last time he had been on the receiving end of a punch.

Endlessly amusing.

But things had to end, they always do.

Even though Conrad has a death grip on the shirt fabric around Worth's waist he pulls away from the kiss.

Worth articulately raises an eyebrow in questioning.

Conrad looks desperate, cagey and unmistakably sad for a moment before shaking his head and making for the door.

He turns just before he leaves and hisses out, "You. fucking. asshole. You're playing with me."

Worth laughs.  Conrad slams the door.

Worth was a little pissed off about the abrupt ending but was also a bit intrigued. True he couldn't really blame Conrad for freaking out and not taking him seriously. Worth never took anything seriously, although he wasn't really thinking about it, or anything, at the time.

All in all Worth just rolled his eyes, called Conrad a choice few names even though he knew he was only talking to himself, went to bed and dreamed about colors that don't exist.

--

unbeta'd, so any mistakes people notice, please let me know.   The title is yanked from a Books song (it never changes to stop).


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